Albert J. Raboteau, Transforming Black Religious Studies, Dies


When Albert was just a baby, his mother, Mabel (Ishem) Raboteau, a teacher and domestic worker, accompanied him and his two sisters to escape the horrors of the Jim Crow-era Deep South and head to Mich. To find new opportunities in the north.

Catholic in his family, Albert attended parochial schools both in Michigan and in Pasadena, California, where his family moved in 1958. By then, his mother had been married to Royal L. Woods, a former priest from Mississippi who had surpassed the clergy. Racism within the church.

Mr Woods taught Albert Latin and Greek, and despite his own fallout with the Catholic Church, it influenced Albert’s childhood interest in being a monk, as Albert eagerly read progressive Catholic writers such as Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton.

Dr. Although Raboteau never attended the priesthood, his interest in religion shaped his academic and professional career. He attended Loyola University, Loyola Marymount University, today a Jesuit institution in Los Angeles, and later earned a master’s degree in literature from the University of California, Berkeley in 1966.

His time at Berkeley coincided with the turmoil of the counterculture and anti-war movements, as well as unfolding events. At Marquette University, where the black political consciousness on college campuses went to pursue a master’s degree in Theology, he led a protest that closed the school for two weeks and called on Marquette to bring in more Black students and faculty.

After graduating from Marquette, Dr. Raboteau taught theology at Xavier University in New Orleans. But the courses knock him down and force him to face questions about his own beliefs that he’s not ready to answer.



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